"I Refuse to Be A Symbol"

Interview with Konstanty Gebert

Konstanty Gebert runs the Warsaw Office of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Daniel Miller: Maybe I could ask you to introduce yourself.

Konstanty Gebert: I am a journalist, currently running the Warsaw office of the European Council on Foreign Relations. I am someone who is active in Jewish issues. I have written some books on the subject.

DM: And you are yourself a Polish Jew...

KG: Yes.

DM: How many Polish Jews are there?

KG: In the previous census, the census of 2001, the number of people who gave their ethnicity as Jewish, ethnicity, was 1,231. The results of last year's census are still being elaborated, if I understand correctly...

DM: 1,231

KG: Yes. Having said that, the census inspectors were instructed to ask the question as follows: Is your ethnicity Polish? Only if you said no, did you have the option to state another ethnicity. So these 1,231 people are people who chose to insist they were Jewish, not Polish. Also, 50,000 people in the same census gave their ethnicity as Ukrainians. Other sources suggest that there are around half a million Ukrainians living in Poland. So if the ration of one to ten obtains also in the case of the Jews, then we could say that there's 12,000 Jews in the country.

DM: Did the same survey also ask for religion?

KG: No... that time the survey didn't ask for religion. In the last census, the one which they conducted in 2010, they asked for religion, but didn't ask for ethnicity.

DM: So somewhere between 1,200 and 12,000. It's really a symbolic population.

KG: Yes...

DM: But a symbol of what?

KG: Uh... well, I assumed you were using symbolic in the colloquial sense, that is, meaning very small. But I refuse to be a symbol. I'm not a symbol. I just happen to live. But I am not making a statement. I reject the concept that we are symbolic in any other but the colloquial sense...

DM: Still, it is a decision on some level, to live here, rather than... there. And I know that Marek Edelman, who died last year, was very affirmative in his statements about why he was in Poland.

KG: Marek said that he didn't want to trade his Polish identity for another identity. But you can make of that what you want. The basic assumption is that people have the right to live where they are born, or on the other side of the world, and it's nobody's business...

DM: I interviewed Cilly Kugelman at the Jewish Museum in Berlin. And she talked a lot about the difference between diaspora identity, perspectives or consciousness, and the Israeli consciousness of Jewishness

KG: Yes... fair enough. But by deciding to live in the diaspora, or deciding to live in Israel, one does not necessarily make a statement. I very much mistrust the idea that just by living we becomes symbols, or statements... I think that's ridiculous. Having said that, if you would rephrase the question, and speak about what is the meaning of living in Poland or Europe, then yes, it does have a meaning.

DM: Do you think there is a fundamental difference in being Jewish in Israel, or outside of Israel?

KG: Each time I'm in Israel, I have this completely schizophrenic double perception. There is this very nasty gloating ''Okay, this is me, this is us'' feeling. It's not the kind of feeling I would like to think of myself as having. But I feel it very strongly, I can not deny it. And simultaneously, I can very easily identify with Israeli Arabs. Because my experience is living in a state where the national mythology is not my national mythology, the national banner is not my national banner, the story that the national anthem says is... somewhat possibly my story, but I really have to bend and twist. So you have this entire schizophrenia, and it doesn't get resolved. It just stays with you, both ends.

DM: How important do you think that sense of being alienated from national mythologies, from a country or a state, is to Judaism as we know it...

KG: Obviously that was the diaspora experience... the defining element was that you don't belong to the national state. And this produces two different drives, one of which is making non-belonging your flag... ultimately, Groucho Marxism, too proud to belong to a club that would have me. And at the other end, you have a desperate longing for belonging, and finally being the majority...

DM: But is a longing to belong, and a longing to be part of the majority the same...

KG: One interesting thing... if you think about the iconography of the diaspora... it's Jews in crowds. Which almost seems to be the opposite of what we think of, when we think of Jews as individualists. But it's crowds of Jews. It is crowds of Hasidim, or crowds of Bundists demonstrating on May 1st, crowds of Zionists marching up and down the main avenue...

DM: The key distinction is if you belong to the crowd, or if the crowd is a mob which is coming to get you..

KG: Yes... and because the Jewish experience with majorities is generally that they are a crowd coming to get you, that was one of the reason why the Jews desperately wanted to be a crowd.

DM: And a state and an army...

KG: Of course. And all of this, getting an orgasm seeing a Jewish policeman... a Jewish policeman being someone who will not beat you up, but will actually beat up the guys who are beating you up... right?

DM: He could still beat you up...

KG: I am willing to pay that price. If he is going to beat up the other guys, and then he beats me up now and then, okay, I can live with that...

DM: Can you?

KG: Me, no. But I am trying to reconstruct myself a hundred years ago.

DM: With regards to something you were saying earlier, my feeling is that Jewishness does not cease to be an issue in Israel – quite the reverse.

KG: It's a different kind of issue. The issues of Jewishness in Israel are secondary to the issues of being a political majority... Jewishness is irrelevant in the Jew/Arab issue in Israel.

DM: You have these people who believe that it's God's demand to create a greater Israel...

KG: But that demand is not necessarily religious, and religiosity does not necessarily entail this demand. The main fact is that you are part of a majority, and therefore are responsible for what is happening. What kind of part of the majority you are is secondary. In this sense, Jewishness in Israel is like Polishness in Poland. What my son meant by his statement was that he had no problem with his Jewishness when it was a civic thing. But he doesn't want people to have attitudes towards him because he is a Jew.

DM: People will always judge you based on groups you belong to that you didn't choose...

KG: Well, yes, to the extent it always happens. You will be always reacted to because you are a man, for example. Yes... that cannot be changed. But Jews are much more reacted to for being Jews then Latvians are for being Latvians, or Lutherans for being Lutherans...

DM: It isn't only a reaction, but also a possible... activity.

KG: I know. But that's exactly what he didn't want. He was just tired of it. It wasn't that he wasn't interested... he is. He's just sick and tired of it being a public issue...

DM: So if we think a bit more about the project to return Jews to Poland...

KG: I... am very disappointed with the way the project went. I thought that beginning was such a brilliant provocation. And then it started, heaven forbid, to treat itself seriously. Look, it's a waste of anybody's time to discuss the possibility of the return of millions of Jews to Europe. I am not going to waste my time on thinking about things that are not going to happen. And on top of that, I really resent the fact that something that I loved, that was provocative and subverting and challenging transformed itself into a part of the very reality it was about to subvert. So...

DM: Which reality?

KG: This entire, ambiguous reaction that Jews have with Europe, with Poland specifically, but with Europe on the general level.

DM: I see the films as promoting a vision of a new diaspora culture in Europe, connecting the experience of European Jews and European Muslims...

KG: But it's not a connection really. The Jews were a small minority that had to function in a Europe that was sure it was the best thing that God had ever invented. Today we have a Europe that no-longer possesses this belief in itself, and is rather hysterically either pulling in or shoving out other influences, in an attempt to make sense of itself. And the Muslim diaspora is big enough to survive, in this Europe, without assimilating, or by barely assimilating. There might be an analogy between the Muslim diaspora and modern Europe, and the Jewish minority in old Poland, except the difference is that the Jews were natives. Whereas the Muslim minority is immigrant...

DM: Less and less...

KG: Yes... with the passage of time, yes. So ask me again in a hundred years and in heaven forbid the analogy applies then we are all in deep shit. The problem is that Europe is not really a continent in which you want to trust civil society. And this is the paradox into which the Muslims have fallen. It makes very good sense to have limited trust, when you are in Europe, and you are not a White Christian Male. But if you have too much mistrust, it of course becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because your mistrust becomes a contributing factor. Now, how to skate between those two...  I really don't know. Jews had to do that, but I think that it was almost easier for us, because we had no alternative... We had to find out what is the way of existing within Europe, that Europeans will be willing to tolerate and respect. But there is an alternative for the Muslim community, and that is to say, let's lock ourselves in the ghetto...

DM: I don't know if that is really an alternative...

KG: Nothing is an alternative in the long term. But in the short term there is the feeling that you can be self-sufficient. You learn a smattering of the language, so you know how to do your shopping, and what to tell the cop, but basically you're not interested in becoming part of that society, and you create your own.

DM: But Europe has not welcomed Muslims into mainstream society

KG: No... but it's actually very interesting, because one would think... where is this backlash? Where is the natural European behavior which is essentially, load them all on ships, and send them to the other end of the world. Why isn't it happening? Technically, it would be feasible. I think the reason why it is not happening is that we no-longer are willing to pay the price.

DM: Which states would be capable of such an operation?

KG: Any European state would be technically capable. But we are not willing to accept our States becoming States that would be politically capable of doing this. And this is why we haven't done it. Not because we've changed, and become more welcoming. But because we don't want to pay the price ourselves. And this is new. This really is one of the legacies of World War Two and the Shoah.

DM: Do you think the Israeli State is more similar to the kind of pre-World War Two state?

Certainly. But I think that it could not become a state that could expel it's Arab citizens because of the visceral reaction people would have. Apart from that, well, this is how Israel was created. Israel was created by pre-World War Two European Nationalists with all the myths and the imagination of nationalism. That is why, in the thirties, when the Polish government turned very right-wing and very tolerant of anti-semitism in Poland, they engaged in a covert program of shipping guns to the Irgun. They identified with them as brothers: they looked at them and said, the Jews are trying to do to the Arabs what we did to the Russians. Break free! This is us! This is our freedom struggle!

DM: Do you think that there is a worldwide obsession or identification with Israel and Palestine.

KG: Look at Kashmir! The matrix of conflict is almost identical. You have this democratic country which is occupying a Muslim territory that didn't want to be part of that country, settling it's own people to change the demographics, fighting a war against terrorism, which is supported by a pretty nasty dictatorship across the border. In the last phase of this conflict, the last quarter century, there have been 66,000 dead. Of those, 3400 ''disappeared'' at the hands of the Indian military intelligence services. If we were to have 3400 Palestinians ''disappeared'' by Shabak! The interesting thing is not even, why is there no international outcry about Kashmir. But why isn't there any interest? I once had a student do a comparative study of the The New York Times, The Times of London, and Le Monde, comparing coverage of Israel and Palestine and Kashmir. The proportion of dead relative to the coverage of the conflict was I believe 58:1, that is, it takes 58 dead people in Kashmir to generate the same amount of media interest that one dead in Israel or Palestine generates.

DM: Are the sources of obsession European?

KG: Europe really goes both ways. On the one hand, it holds Israel responsible for European sins. You Israelis are as bad as we are. But at the same time, Europe winks at Israel, and says, you know, that we Whites know that sometimes that's the only way of dealing with the natives. And since this is happening at the same time, and sometimes from the same people, it is difficult to understand.

DM: Maybe one way of thinking about this project is in terms of understanding this complex relationship between Israel, Palestine and Europe...

KG: What I find more interesting is text. For example., I would love to see somebody do a good comparative study of the self-descriptions of Hamas and Shas...

DM: But what if your aim was not only to study, but also to somehow intervene?

KG: I don't know... I'm not an artist. I am a disappointed fan. I thought that the success of the film was in challenging things that we have in our heads. But even treating half-seriously the idea of returning to Poland is a failure, because it gives us answers and not questions. You look at European history. There are no good answers. So that's where my disappointment comes from...

DM: All answers are disappointments to you?

KG: Yeah... I mean, there might be a hierarchy, there are bigger or smaller disappointments, occasional glimmer of hope. But I am not really very much interested in answers. I am interested in questions.

DM: So let's focus on the question...

It is the European Question... what are identities, and what can we do them? In fact, there was another Jewish answer to the question then the one that Yael Bartana presents in her film, and that was the Jewish intellectual cultural movement in late Hapsburg Austria just before World War I. You had this incredible appearance of all these different characters the Wittgensteins, the Mahlers and the Freuds...

DM: Krauss...

KG: For all their vast differences, they had this one thing in common, they still had one leg, one way or the other, in their Jewish background, and another leg, one way or another, in the gentile background they had moved into, which was mainly German speaking, but could also Czech Hungarian, Ukrainian or Polish. They were in fact Europeans avant-la-lettre. And this was the previous Jewish answer to the issue of identity. It was only after it failed with bloody murder, or it started to fail, that Jews started moving away with other answers. And in that sense this continues to be the European question. Whether you are supposed to assume the identity we carry in our genes. Or whether we just screw the genes and pursue our interests, our imaginations, and our freedom.

DM: Let's talk some more about this marvelous vanished culture...

KG: It is gradually emerging in Europe a second time, but this time not by people who are fleeing an oppressive identity, but because an entire sphere has opened out and people are entering it, and finding their own ways out. It is going to be confused for another generation or so, but unless something unimaginable happens, we eventually will start having Europeans, because people will become too tired to try apportion different elements of their identity, to say, well, this comes from here, and this comes from there... it will get too ridiculous.

DM: There will be Europeans, and meanwhile the Jews will turn into Middle Easterners...

KG: They are... and probably this is the only way out. And Israel is changing. It's the music you hear. It's the rappers on the street. It's the general sense of... things slightly crumbling. And as Israel becomes more Levantine, it becomes more acceptable. Remember the first Arab violence in the Mandate was when those Communist girls in shorts started parading from Tel Aviv to Yafo, in what was it, 21? 22?

DM: It must have been terrible

KG: It must have! Imagine! Imagine! But the less European and the more Levantine that Israel becomes, the more acceptable it becomes. Look, I am going to say a very good word about Avigdor Liberman. He could be foreign minister of any Arab country. This language... ''Well, if the Egyptians don't like, we'll bomb the Aswan dam.'' He finally sounds credible! Liberman is credible. He speaks the local language, the local idiom.

DM: This was his campaign slogan. Only Liberman understands Arabic

KG: Yes, and this... is... acculturation. There is this kind of smirk you see on the faces of most Arab leaders, and leaders around the region. He's got it. He looks the role. And it's very clear that he probably hates you and me only slightly less than he hates the Arabs. If there is even any difference at all. And this makes him credible.

DM: So... you think Liberman is... a good sign?

KG: In a way, yes. Because it shows acculturation is possible. Let us hope that acculturation doesn't only bring Libermans...

DM: So from your perspective the Jews should stay in the Middle East..

KG: I would never say a sentence that starts with ''The Jews should...'' There are a few sentences that I could say that would start with “I wish the Jews would...” On a personal level I feel an involvement in the Jewish presence in the Middle East. On a material level, it's half of the Jewish people. Even if half of the Jewish people is wrong...

DM: It's more than likely...

KG: But... I think it's important that we are back where we came from...

DM: So perhaps we could find a conclusion...

KG: But there is no conclusion, that is the point. It doesn't end. It doesn't even end when the Messiah comes. It's just the terms of the game get changed. But the game continues. It is about Tikun Olam. This might sound slightly heretical, but if you think consistently, there is a point at which all of the Tikun has been done. So what is the point? We just return to Square One. Unless... we break it as we are repairing it, there will come a point at which it becomes pointless.

This interview was conducted in Warsaw on March 9 2012 at 3pm, and transcribed and edited by Daniel Miller.